Marie Rimmer MP , Han Fei, Hui Li, Tian Xin, Professor Baroness Finlay – with contributions to the Hearing from David Matas and Eleanor Stephenson, lawyers specialising in international human rights law and international criminal law.
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Falun Gong: A Sickening Persecution – Lord Alton of Liverpool. 5th November 2024
This year marks 25 years of persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China.
In China, practitioners of Falun Gong are subject to mass surveillance, arbitrary arrests, forced labour, torture, rape, brainwashing, they are forced to denounce their beliefs and even subjected to forced organ harvesting – where the Falun Gong practitioner will die in the process of having their organs extracted for use in transplantation.
A quarter of a century of atrocities, that will, inevitably, to quote Sir Geoffrey Nice KC during the China Tribunal Judgment summary,
“be likened to the worst atrocities committed in conflicts of the 20th century; but victim for victim and death for death, the gassing of the Jews by the Nazis, the massacre by the Khmer Rouge or the butchery to death of the Rwanda Tutsis may not be worse than cutting out the hearts, other organs and the very souls of living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people.”
I have spoken many times over the years in the House about the plight of Falun Gong as well as the atrocities of forced organ harvesting. I am therefore honoured to be sat here with my good friend Marie Rimmer, who has also been dedicated to this issue, as well to have in the audience my Right Hon friend, Lord Hunt. The remarkable efforts between them, which I gladly supported, initiated a change in UK law to prevent commercial organ tourism to countries such as China.
In August this year, forced organ harvesting made news headlines again, when Cheng Peiming, a 59-year-old Falun Gong practitioner and the first known survivor of forced organ harvesting in China, shared his story at a press conference in Washington, D.C.
In November 2004, while serving an eight-year sentence for practicing Falun Gong, Cheng was taken to a hospital and forcibly anesthetized. He awoke three days later, shackled to a hospital bed, with a 14-inch incision on the left side of his body. It wasn’t until after Peiming escaped to the United States in 2018 and later underwent medical tests that he discovered part of his liver and lung had been removed.
On 3rd September this year, 20 years after the forced surgery, Cheng said, “The 35-centimeter scar on my left rib cage throbs with every beat of my pulse”.
Following Cheng’s public testimony, the CCP issued a widely circulated statement attempting to discredit Cheng but which inadvertently confirmed key details of his account. The statement confirms that Cheng was indeed detained for his practice of Falun Gong and that Cheng was forced to undergo surgery. However, the statement claimed the surgery was to remove a nail Cheng had swallowed—an explanation that physicians say does not justify such a large incision nor the removal of part of his liver and lung.
In addition to the surgery Cheng was forced to undergo, he was given a lengthy eight-year sentence and severely tortured. He managed to escape from prison in 2006 and was later rescued thanks to the efforts of Robert Destro, then US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Democracy and Labor. Cheng’s case serves as a reminder of the horrors Falun Gong practitioners in China still face and the urgent need for an international response.
To date, over 5,000 documented cases of Falun Gong practitioners dying due to persecution have been reported. But in a country where prisoners of conscience have their organs forcibly harvested and then, their remains incinerated to destroy all evidence – this can only be the very tip of the iceberg, we have no idea how many undocumented deaths there have may been.
Outside of China, the Chinese Communist Party also targets Falun Gong. They use disinformation and propaganda, harassment, surveillance, cyber-attacks, diplomatic pressure, threats, physical attacks and have made efforts to extradite and even abduct Falun Gong practitioners living abroad.
According to leaked CCP documents, congressional testimonies from former Chinese diplomats, and third-party investigations, the CCP has enacted operations around the world to silence, marginalize, and suppress Falun Gong since the launch of the persecution in 1999.
Mr. Chen Yonglin, the former first secretary of the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, Australia, who defected to Australia in 2005 was the first to reveal the full scope of the CCP’s actions abroad. He testified before US Congress that the top priority of every Chinese consulate and embassy around the world is to systematically “wage war” against Falun Gong outside of China. He said,
“Each consulate and embassy has a ‘Special Anti-Falun Gong Working Group’ that works closely with the United Front Work Department, an organisation under the CCP. The United Front uses the overseas Chinese diaspora, including students, businesspeople, media, and so-called ‘Chinese community groups’ to influence, manipulate, and pressure foreign citizens, politicians, and business leaders to toe the party line on Falun Gong.”
Mr Chen notes that each Chinese consulate or embassy implements many tactics to block support for Falun Gong, including:
- Widely spreading anti-Falun Gong propaganda in host countries to demonise Falun Gong;
- Funding, and otherwise controlling, Chinese-language publications within the local Chinese community;
- Using Chinese immigrants and students to monitor and report on Falun Gong activities in local communities and on campuses;
- Pressuring local officials and subjecting them to economic threats or incentives.
Within the past two years, the CCP has launched more overt campaigns to suppress the Falun Gong diaspora around the world. This is apparent through street violence, attempts at soft power subversion, and attacks on media outlets and organisations founded by Falun Gong practitioners. These operations continue today.
Last year, the UK Intelligence and Security Committee of parliament published a damning report on China. The report says that China has penetrated ‘every sector’ of the UK’s economy, while recognising that Falun Gong is perceived by the CCP as one of the greatest domestic threats to its rule.
Newly leaked CCP documents reveal a worldwide disinformation campaign to try to “eliminate” Falun Gong and Shen Yun globally.
The leaked information describes a strategic decision by the regime’s security apparatus to escalate its persecution of Falun Gong around the world and outlines detailed plans to turn global public opinion against Falun Gong and Shen Yun via a multi-pronged information manipulation campaign.
Attacks on Shen Yun, as a way to target Falun Gong, have taken place since its inception. In every country Shen Yun has visited, including the UK, theatres have been pressured by the local Chinese Embassy to stop the performance.
Previously, Shen Yun tour bus tires have been slashed in Canada and the US. This year, this escalated to bomb threats at one theatre in California. A day before the show there, the theatre received an email stating:
“We randomly placed a lot of bombs in the theatre. If you don’t want us to detonate the bombs, please refuse Shen Yun Performing Arts to perform here immediately!”
Mercifully, after the theatre was evacuated, no bomb was found. But the lengths the CCP and its agents will go to repress the Falun Gong community is astounding.
It is more important than ever that our government takes a strong stand against the Chinese Communist Party’s bullying and propaganda tactics – and even more critically, a stand against the ongoing human rights atrocities faced by the people of China. No one should have to face imprisonment, torture nor butchery because of their religious or spiritual beliefs.
Han Fei and Tian Xin – who described to the Hearing first hand experience of imprisonment, torture, and persecution.
